Radio War Nerd EP #519 — Clash of Worlds in the Amazon, feat. Alex Cuadros
Guest: Alex Cuadros
Recorded: May 2, 2025
We're joined by author-journalist Alex Cuadros to talk about his new book When We Sold God's Eye, the incredible story of the Cinta Larga tribe from the Brazilian Amazon, who first made contact with Brazilians in the 1960s. What quickly followed was like compressing 500 violent years of Indigenous Americans' experiences with settlers into a generation: violence, capitalism, riches, poverty, disease, murder, extermination...
Buy Alex's book When We Sold God's Eye: Diamonds, Murder and a Clash of Worlds in the Amazon
Total time: 1:32:48
Direct link to this episode's mp3 here
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Comments (14)
John and Mark are in their absolute element talking about mosquito bites and parasites here.
Great ep. I think The Ice Shirt by William Vollmann is a really good novel around this theme
I will do my reading professor
Ernst Cassirer mentions the idea that there's no death without malice in An Essay On Man. We're reading it in my reading group, and I also found this idea intuitively correct. Here's the book at archive.org if you're interested, it's on page 111 https://archive.org/details/ErnstCassirerAnEssayOnMan/page/n109 Also, since someone mentioned a documentary about undiscovered tribes, one of my favorites, Secrets of the Tribe, is also on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd7SXbsn0hU
A really good book of a similar theme, I’m sure the guest may have read it, is Gary Van Valen’s Agency in the Amazon, it discusses the rubber trade in Bolivia, the labour conditions and a christian millenarian movement that arose amongst the Mojos people. Great episode and great guest!
Just ordered When We Sold God's Eye, excited to read it!
Loved the episode. Herzog did a great short documentary on another instance of first contact in the Amazon. Worth watching if you’re interested in the subject. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ckoLrrXMYTc
Damn this topic was so good even my gf asked what I was listening to…
Keen to read the book. Great episode.
Yes to all that about the democracts, and on top of it they now absolutely despise their base re: Gaza protests so they'll never give us social programs just out of spite
Ordered the book! Thanks Alex Cuadros, and thanks guys for the episode!
The European Union and the established party’s in Germany are creating the AFD from their actions. They are making the same mistake as the Dems in the US. They preach and scream democracy but they mean is sit down, shut up and let us grown up’s run everything. The centrist Germans that would never bring themselves to vote AFD might be on the brink of change after being blatantly betrayed by Merz and coming coalition.
I'm deathly curious: were the monkey brains chilled, or unchilled?
Excited to hear this one